What made the iPhone and many Apple products successful are the techies. Many people seems to think its the mass of "sheep" (as in, they don't know exactly what they're buying and take what everyone buys) which are responsible for that. But in fact, they buy what the geek friends advise. It builds up fast and sheep A tells sheep B that device ZXY is not the hype and best anymore.

Now that the tendency is reversed, certainly, Apple will stay mostly on top for a while, but at the end of they day if they do not change, every time someone is going to buy an iPhone, he's going to ask his tech friend if it's the right choice and be pointed to android/meego. (mostly android nowadays).

If you don't believe this, watch Chrome the browser, even vs Firefox. Firefox is a good browser, but the techies tendency is towards Chrome. Result, while Firefox is big, Chrome climbs rapidly. And hey again.. Firefox is a good browser made by a good company!

Now.. the iPhone is not even very good, and Apple is not a very good company (morally speaking). however they multiply lock-ins (like if you pay $100 of apps, you're going to want another iPhone, not a new product) to slow the process down. But we'll see.

I think you laughable over estimate your importance and the importance of what you call techies/geeks (but what you actually mean are anti-Apple paranoids).

Apple will continue to sell increasing numbers of iPhones. The iOS will continue to grow very fast and will remain the dominant mobile OS by far. Get used to to it, calm down and start looking at what Google is up to with slightlty more critical eyes (here is a hint - Google is a private enterprise just like all the rest - and its business model depends on collecting information about what you do on the internet - how cool is that?).

No it hasn't - each OS takes decisions to add or emphasise different features but Android has not pulled ahead and it won't. Because Android is fragmented and because it cannot integrate with the hardware as deeply or predictably as iOS the latter is a more attractive platform for developers.

"Remain"? Both Symbian and BlackBerry are FAR more dominant than iOS. RDF much?

iOS has an installed base of 100 million and unlike the Symbian and BlackBerry it offers a far more cohesive and accessible target for developers - hence the vast preponderance of iOS apps. iOS is the dominant mobile platform in the central and strategic metric of developer support.

What counts now is not dumbed down systems like Symbian but the smart mobile platform - that's the game to play and its the game iOS is clearly winning.

With 10 million plus iPhones, a lot of iPod Touches and a million (2 million?) iPads likely being sold per month the installed iOS base is growing very rapidly and will thus continue to be the most attractive platform for developers (plus of course the App Store which is hugely popular with developers).